HST duplicate signatures - Much ado about very little
By Peter Ewart
Tuesday, November 09, 2010 03:45 AM
By Peter Ewart
What should we make of a government that sets up a "racetrack" in which it reserves the clear and open lane for itself, and puts as many hurdles, pits and obstacles as possible for the runners in the other lane? Not surprisingly, at least a few of the people in the latter lane are bound to stumble or make a mistake. It goes with the territory.
And so it is with the "revelation" from the recently-appointed head of Elections BC that a handful of the 700,000 FightHST supporters may have signed the petition more than once. About 2,250 extra signatures, to be exact, are duplicates, which amounts to less than one third of 1%. As a result, 7 canvassers (out of over 3,000 across the province) are being "investigated" for allegedly "breaching their duties".
Quite frankly, I would have expected more duplication and more "irregularities" given the province-wide scope of the initiative petition (85 ridings, many of them huge), the large number of signatures required, the extremely tight timelines, the confusing paperwork, and all the other cumbersome and onerous requirements of the Initiative Legislation.
Just the simple act of volunteers getting approval from Elections BC to act as canvassers often took weeks, all the while the clock ticking towards the 90 day deadline. And there were many other problems and headaches with the process.
Unlike a regular election where voters can go to pre-determined voting sites (paid for by government and supervised by election officials and a well-oiled election machine), initiative "signature gathering" campaigns such as that launched by FightHST, rely entirely on volunteer labour working flat out to gather signatures and obtain donations, as well as to set up physical "signing" sites.
While the Premier and his MLAs can sit back with thousands of taxpayer-paid staffers, practically unlimited funds and a big "bully pulpit" to propagate their message, the burden on citizen volunteers under the existing Initiative process is enormous. It is truly a "David and Goliath" contest.
To compound problems, in the year since the HST was first announced by the Campbell government, there have been other non-Initiative petitions against the HST put out by various organizations. I know from my own experience as a canvasser that a number of people I approached to sign up for the Initiative campaign initially refused to do so, because they believed they had already signed before. After questioning, it became clear they had signed an entirely different petition that had nothing to with the present campaign, and thus were eligible to sign the FightHST one after all.
That being said, I have no doubt the converse was also true. In a nutshell - that some people signed up twice because they thought, mistakingly, that the petition they signed at work with one canvasser was different from the one they signed door-to-door with another canvasser. And so it goes with a process with which even the government itself is unfamiliar, let alone ordinary voters.
The fact is that, over twenty years ago, British Columbians voted overwhelmingly to bring in Initiative and Recall Legislation. And the fact also is that the government of that time (as well as the later BC Liberal government), proceeded to make the Legislation as difficult and unwieldy as possible for the voters of BC to utilize successfully.
That is why there has been only one successful Initiative signature campaign in all of those twenty years, the one achieved by FightHST. And that is why the Initiative and Recall legislation needs to be overhauled and made more "voter-friendly".
Despite the obstacles, pitfalls and confusion, the anti-HST campaign was successful. The message from this victory should be not how "many" duplicate signatures were collected, but rather how few.
The army of FightHST volunteers, as well as former Premier Bill Vander Zalm who initiated the campaign and Chris Delaney, lead organizer, deserve congratulations on this achievement and on their professionalism in carrying out such a difficult task.
Let's not forget this when certain politicians and pundits, all of whom should know better, try to make much ado about what amounts to very little.
Peter Ewart is a writer and columnist based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca
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Posted by: socredible on November 9 2010 7:45 AM
It is not hard to see what they are doing, but do they not also see that they are once again shooting themselves in the head?
It is also not hard to see who Elections B.C. works for!
This is nothing more than a vendetta by a bunch of elected bullies!
Dead government walking without a doubt!